I came across a problem today with Mozilla Thunderbird (though not necessarily isolated to this client) and the POP mail server. It came about because a user has been out of the office and not pop’ing his mail to the desktop. The server had accumulated 100MB of email over this time.
The problem
Thunderbird has a default pop timeout of 45 seconds. In that 45s, the client must authenticate, the server must create a lock file, and copy over the mail spool into a temporary file, before Thunderbird can begin downloading the mail. If the server cannot copy the 100MB mail file into a temporary file within the 45second limit the timeout message occurs.
The solution
The solution is logical, but inconveinent to implement. Microsoft Outlook has a nice ‘server timeout’ setting in preferences, but Thunderbird’s is buried in a javascript file in the user’s profile (prefs.js). Editing that file and appending
user_pref(“mail.pop3_response_timeout”, 300);
to the end will increase the timeout to 300 seconds. After relaunching, Thunderbird can successfully download mail without the poplock busy error.
Actually, if you are using Thunderbird 1.5 you can modify the setting of the configuration property through the GUI accessing Tools -> Options -> Advanced and modifying the value of “Connection timeout” (defaults to 60 seconds). This changes mailnews.tcptimeout (which is used instead of mail.pop3_response_timeout ). In previous releases you can install the AboutConfig extension to set the mail.pop3_response_timeout property in a more user-friendly way ( see https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=thunderbird&numpg=10&id=423)
Thank you so much for this. I did not realize that if the timeout was longer the mail server can actually download the data. I had tried what i thought was everything to get the mail to come in, now it has. Thanks a bunch
For reference, on Windows prefs.js is located in:
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\1vnxnrtm.default\
*update*
Sorry, that was Firefox prefs,
try this one instead:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\p3ar4zpe.default\
@Hardway: thx
I have the same problem with my TB pop3 account. Very frustrating especially when it worked fine previously. Only yesterday I was able to get email messages by changing to port 20. Setting the port back to the default 25 I was still able to send/receive email until this morning when it was just like hitting a brick wall. Tried all your above suggestions guys but no luck. Any help would be much appreciated. Finally is this a TB specific issue only?
what is all this pop 3 ive been trying my utmost to get all this but simply dont understand what the hell your talking about,my email was put in by an expert . ihave books on computer language but its all too much to understand half the time im using trail and error learning by mistakes . surely theres an easier solution
I am using Thunderbird 3.0, but have had this problem with 2.x as well.. I have modified my mailnews.tcptimeout from 100 to 9000.
Restarted, and still have the same problem.
But get this, I can go start > run > ‘cmd’ > ping mail.mymailserver.com
..and I get ping times below 400 milliseconds. (no lost pings) I know this is high, but I am an expat in China.
If anyone knows an effective solution other than using a virtual private network (VPN) connection, I am very interested in knowing it.
I am a computer technician with a degree, I’ve searched comprehensively and also checked Thunderbirds official pages on this subject.
That being said, if anyone out there isn’t holding a bachellor’s degree in computer repair, it’s unlikely that you will find a solution for this.
Thunderbird simply screwed up by using settings that are unrealistic for anyone that needs to get their mail from a server that’s in a different country.